Dev Discussion Better Membership

I'm not gonna lie, I skimmed through most of the comments on this thread. It's 4am, I'm half awake... so please forgive me if some of this has been said previously.

So let us take a look at what current resources we have to work with, rather than adding something "new" to the pile for our subscriptions.

Weekly events (well almost weekly) such as increased drop rates, double artifact xp, double (triple) currency, etc...

1. What if, as a subscriber, you get these as a permanent addition to your account. Not only is it something that is already implemented into the game, and most importantly, the code... but it is something they already turn on and off with a "switch". How easy would it be to make these permanently in the "on" position for us subscribers?
2. I saw before having access to seasonal events all year round. That would take a bit of scripting and coding to make a permanent fixture in the game. Instead, give the subs a new "shop" in our hideouts that will act as a seasonal vendor and daily quest giver for the events. Then with that "down the line" they could add in a way to make the alerts/raids a permanent fixture as well.
3. An increase in monthly "gifts". So many other games give you in game cash currency almost equal to what your monthly payment is. This should already be in place IMO.
4. Account unlocks. Allow all costumes, auras, etc... to be account wide unlocks rather than having 99% of them per character. Or... lets go all sorts of crazy, and take it once step further. Those of us that pay the monthly sub, our feats are ACCOUNT WIDE, not character based!

These are a few things I've seen other games do for their subs, while I absolutely LOVE DCUO, they are a bit behind on the curve when it comes to subscriber benefits, more so now that the episodes will be free to everyone.

This, so much this! Needs more visibility, it's a great idea.

Many of the suggestions mentions things like a free monthly seal, or some extra replay badges, artifact XPs, but these stuff you can get already with Microtransactions. So are these items 'cheaper' if with a membership price?

Nice job derailing the thread with petty bickering and Premium perks that are not the focus of the OP.

Is removing benefits from F2P or Premium members on the table?

I'm not sure how much work this would be for the systems team, but you could make it so that, going forward, those non-members get only generic boxes or styles from the original leveling content instead of the newly released styles, which would drop or be purchasable as usual for subscribers and would be available on the marketplace for others.

That would bring DCUO more in-line with other F2P game models. The style sets, chromas, and auras are a lot of work and a big part of the game-- I think it's worth considering the idea of not giving those away for free.

Second Idea. What if you had a different vault experience for membership players? Something with much better drops; Nth Metals, double source marks, better styles, etc.

We need to be able to hold our money even if we not a paid member that's not far we under a paid wall we got to paid for everything on there some of that should be free

Me either. I think there's a fair criticism for announcing this change before announcing the feature that will also replace it or this mystery feature on the roadmap. In fact, this seems like an obvious mistake to avoid so I'm hoping that the new feature they have on the Roadmap is intended to be the replacement draw for memberships and they just haven't announced it yet. -- making this thread more of a "crossing our Ts and dotting our Is" move than a real consultation with the community. That may sound optimistic but I don't believe this dev team would make a "mistake" like what this appears it could be.

That said, you'd be surprised at the amount of work that can be done in time. We already have a style manager for costume styles and the ability to spend replays on individual items. So the tech is in place. They could tweak the costume style manager system with some improvements and then apply the same system to powersets, personalities, movement modes, (all the things we've been asking for) etc. At that point it's mostly UI stuff that could be done in time if the will is there.

Oh, I'm fully aware of those items. I just don't believe they have the value you think they have. Most of those items are one and done or are mostly important to hardcore/lifer players, but aren't as valuable to people outside of that hardcore demo.

Of course, you're fully welcome to disagree like you do. Totally fair. Without real #s this is all best guess work for both of us; coming down to having an intuition of what's what with the avg player.

Again, I think this is a fair. Like I said, I'm hoping they already have either my suggestions on the board or something else of equal value coming on that roadmap.

And again, I suggested most of this in one of my points also so I don't disagree with your "list of demands" either. But for me, this is a bare minimum of what has to happen and I don't believe it will be nearly enough on its own.

devaluing a current membership tier doesn't increase MY value as a member. Full stop.

A move like that seems more like "contempt for your basic daily players" than it does "value addition for an actual subscriber".

Hard pass.

I understand your perspective, in both points. However I would point out:

1. Styles are essentially being given away for free. Most other games don't do that, and Fortnight basically lives on selling styles.
2. In this case it's not just taking something away from Premiums and Frees, it would be a trade: you have to buy styles from now on, but all your episodes are free.

Gotham Wastelands!

I can see your point, and I agree that styles are a major motivator in this game. But, this wouldn't ADD anything to membership. It's just keeping what you already have.

To maybe continue with your idea, though, maybe DCUO could use a type of members-only season pass that would have a bunch of style things to unlock every 2 months. The reward track would have an exclusive, members-only complete style set (of Time Capsule quality) several auras, a couple of accessories, a pet, a single chroma, maybe a weapons skin or orbital, etc. Daybreak Cash, seals of preservation, seals of completion, artifact XP, etc.

This wouldn't necessarily have to involve a ton of extra development time, either. You know all of those Bonus weekends we get with New (pets, auras, special styles, etc.) The things in there could easily be made as subscriber-only rewards.

Full disclosure: The following is an idea for a future feature, which I'm aware is not what this thread is about, but I figured it's the best place to put it at the moment. tl;dr at the bottom.

Something just popped into my head a little while ago, and this isn't something that could even be completed in time for the membership revamp I don't think but it could be worth considering for the future. Champions Online has a feature called "Freeform" character slots, where if your character is Freeform you can cherry pick abilities from any of their version of power sets all on one character. Perhaps a feature could be implemented in the future that would allow us to do something similar, except we could have one power for each role on a specific character. For argument's sake let's call the DCUO version of this feature Exomod. For example my main is a Celestial Healer/DPS, but if we had an Exomod system in place I would be able to select one Controller and one Tank power set for that character too which could be switched on the fly.

I know people have suggested plenty of times in the past that they want to be able to save a power set to an armory which they can switch between any time they want, but that digs into power respec token revenue. With a feature like Exomod perhaps a perk for members could be that they get Exomod status on X number of characters on their account, where each of those characters has a Primary, Secondary and Tertiary power set. Free/Premium players could purchase Exomod status on a per-character basis from the MP separately if they wished (and members could buy extra if the status is not applied to every character on the account). Or to make membership even more appealing you could make it exclusive to members only.

This wouldn't/shouldn't eat into respec revenue because Secondary and Tertiary powers are still locked, you wouldn't just be able to freely switch from say Light to Munitions for your Controller slot, you would still have to buy a respec token to change that. However if there is something I'm overlooking in that respect, when it comes to respec revenue, please do point it out.

tl;dr: Implement a new feature potentially exclusive to members that allows one or more characters to have up to three powersets (One Healer, one Controller and one Tank) available on one character that we can freely switch between. When I say "freely switch between" I mean freely switch from your Healer powerset to your Tank powerset to your Controller powerset. It must be one power from each role, can't have two Healer powersets for example, and if you want to switch from one Healer powerset to another you still need to buy a respec token.

If the devs won't give new features then they should expect a lot less money from subs. Sorry but 'give more free stuff' doesn't qualify as good ideas. If they're not willing to do more why bother asking? do they really need a thread telling them 'give more free stuff' I hope people will not sub based on such low effort and force them to actually put some effort in.

So what do you make of comments saying new features are impossible and the most we can expect is "more free stuff" from marketplace?

Exactly correct. Leaguemates and I were having that exact discussion a couple days ago. If they weren't asking for real suggestions beyond "free stuff" they wouldn't need to ask us at all and would just give us $15 worth of free stuff. They're looking for big ideas.

I think his first sentence was a direct reply to those people.

I'm fine with the change as long as those styles are not related to feats. Put 1000+ more styles that are in member only as long as they are not feats, and no worries. Tie feats to them and yeah...it's another 'pay to win' scenario.

Not sure if Fortnite uses any kind of 'feats' or stat point type system, but my understanding is styles there are purely cosmetic options. If you are comparing the 2 games, make sure it's equal footing...cosmetics only, not progression.

Is there any way to increase drop rates for members? Like the rare collection pieces and stuff in capsules, the tail in the promethium box, and rare or ultra rare drops with in-game content. Better drop rates for members might be good, but then it also might effect the economy of the game when it comes to tradable stuff. Assuming this is an option at all.

Haha, yeah, I thought about adding a little note to the end of my reply in anticipation of your correction, but I thought I could get away with not being entirely accurate. No, I've actually been around since the beginning but didn't make the distinction because $2,000 is effectively the same as $3,000 if we're speaking practically.

I have been curious as to why the increase of a couple years ago was so small and your question of "what does it tell you" prompted me to think, and perhaps R&D vendor prices played a role. Premiums not being able to easily craft things is surely an intended frustration and too much of an increase in the cash cap would eliminate this frustration. This definitely hurts my argument that increasing the cash cap enough to allow Premiums to comfortably repair wouldn't affect anything else. I hadn't thought of the R&D factor and there might be other factors I'm not aware of. I have no problem with the crafting restrictions on Premiums, by the way.

I do just want to comment on one more thing. The cash cap being so low is undoubtedly meant to frustrate Premium players. What I'm not convinced of is that the specific scenario I described in my very first post (having to make multiple sales to cover a single repair bill) is entirely by design. I say this because it wasn't always the problem it is today. No one had $2,000+ repair bills when the game first came out. It's a consequence of the increasing cost of repairing gear over the years. That said, I'm sure there is a solution that can solve this one specific problem without inadvertently lifting other intentional frustrations currently in place.


Edit: I saw you mentioned R&D in a later comment, so yeah I guess that is definitely a factor in the cash cap. Honestly, I had no ulterior motives in giving the 20-100k range, I just wasn't thinking of any of the other possible effects outside of repairing (aside from the broker ones). Allowing access to escrow for repairs only sounds like it could be a good solution though.

This is actually an upgrade for non-members: you should increase the cash cap. I mean, since you decided to make all the pisodes free to all players, this is something that needs to be done. The way I see it, there's no point in playing the regular version of a raid or whatever (which is more difficult than the event version) if you don't have enough cash to repair your gear. I mean, with a 3k cash cap, if you die like three times and you don't have anything to sell in your inventory, you can only leave the istance.